


A Disquiet Follows My Sole

by afrakaday



Category: Battlestar Galactica, Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Aquaria, F/M, Missing Scene, Precoital, Running, Summerfest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-14
Updated: 2013-09-14
Packaged: 2017-12-26 12:34:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/965972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afrakaday/pseuds/afrakaday
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After her run across <i>Galactica</i>, Laura remembers and revives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Disquiet Follows My Sole

**Author's Note:**

  * For [miabicicletta](https://archiveofourown.org/users/miabicicletta/gifts).



Her lungs burn, lactic acid blossoms from her muscles. She’d had time for this, once; years ago, before the end of the worlds, before politics and travel took over what was left of her life.

She’d forgotten how invigorating it was. Awash in endorphins, aloof to everything except the soothing sound of one footstrike followed by another. The metronymic rhythm is more pronounced here on the ship than in her memories, her heavy black shoes smacking against metal plating far more substantially than her light-soled sneakers ever had against the oft-traveled asphalt of her favorite jogging path.

Bill’s question had caught her off guard. _You run the whole route?_ It hadn’t occurred to her that her first real run since pre-occupation New Caprica (she doesn’t count the desperate, defensive running that she did after the Cylons arrived on that godsforsaken planet) might be measured by a particular distance as opposed to her original plan of just running until she got too tired to go on and decided to turn around. To her surprise, she hadn’t tired, and seeing Bill had only energized her. That was quite some time ago. Just how many clicks was the “whole route”?

Curious crewmembers’ looks don’t slow her down. Neither does Bill’s warning: _the government is spinning out of control._ Right now, she can’t deal with that. She won’t.

So she runs, and it feels good. And she keeps running, until she finds herself back at her guest quarters, having gone from one end of _Galactica_ to the other. Stern to bow, port to starboard.

 

* * *

 

The comm rings, and this time, she picks it up. “Roslin.”

_”Laura. Good, you’re back. I’m on my way over.”_

“What, to hassle me some more about the Quorum? Bill, I told you, I just need a little more--”

 _”That’s not it.”_ He hesitates. _”I just...want to see you. Live life as people again, you know?”_

She touches the knot of her green headscarf, briefly contemplating putting the wig back on and just as quickly rejecting the notion. “Get over here.”

 

* * *

 

She’d gotten as far as lighting some candles around her quarters, imparting a soft glow to the imposing bulkheads, before exhaustion overcame her and “resting her eyes” became a full-fledged nap. The rap at the hatch startles her out of her light slumber.

Her muscles protest as she stands, stretches, and goes to let him in.

His face holds the hint of a smile. His eyes are warm, and her stomach trips over itself when he steps toward her.

“Hey,” he says, leaning in to kiss her cheek. “Still feeling good?”

“Tired,” she admits, wrapping the button-down shirt that’s the closest thing she’s got to a robe in these quarters a little tighter over her ivory nightgown. “But it’s a good tired.” She lets herself lean into him, lets his solid presence support her. “I earned it,” she adds, mumbling into his shoulder.

She means the sore muscles, but realizes that Bill’s surveying the room and probably thinks her words are a callback to her declaration a few hours earlier.

“You have,” he agrees. His wide hands sweep up and down the plane of her back, and she relaxes even further, suddenly resenting their vertical position. And though she loved every step, every moment of her run earlier in the day, she resents too -- just a little -- that she’d spent that euphoric detoxifying time by herself instead of with him.

But they’re here, together, now, and she doubts that would have been possible without putting her body through those paces long enough to get her mind out of the dark room, lit only by pages of flaming prophecy, where she’d been lingering since they first returned from Earth.

_Earth._

Bill senses the tension that’s returned with those thoughts and gently turns her to lead them deeper into her quarters. He hesitates in front of the single leather chair where he’d sat earlier and pleaded with her to get back to work, but she gives him a little tug and he follows her willingly to sit on her bed. She’s glad he does because, in line with her earlier dismissal of his entreaties, this is where she wants to be and what she wants to be doing.

Oh, yes. This is _really_ what she wants, she thinks, as Bill eases her shirt off her shoulders and begins rubbing her back in earnest.

“Mmmmm,” she sighs happily, rolling onto her stomach. “Might have overdone it a bit.” She turns her head and looks at him sidelong. “Because _someone_ put the idea in my head that I ought to run the whole route.”

His eyes widen in equal parts surprise and concern. “Did you really? I didn’t mean to--”

She reaches for his hand and gives it a squeeze before placing it at her lower back in a clear suggestion. He obediently begins kneading the tight muscles that none of her efforts at stretching had managed to loosen. “Sorry I’m so demanding, Bill.”

“That’s okay.” His thumbs press against the dimples at her lower back, his hands come to rest on the curves of her ass. “I never took you for much of a runner before, Laura.”

“Oh no?” She turns her head again and quirks a small smile. “I love it.”

“I don’t doubt that you do. I just never thought about it before today, seeing you out there, running laps around the hangar deck.”

A giggle escapes as she thinks back. “I jogged quite a bit on New Caprica. It was the best way to explore, see what was out there.” A way to escape the demands of her students, neighbors, the people who still looked to her as a leader. She takes a deep breath and exhales slowly, savoring his touch. She shifts slightly under him, shivers as his hands cup each buttock firmly through the thin satin of her nightgown before turning his attention to her hamstrings. “I just wasn’t very interested going for a run on those rare occasions when I had a visitor.”

(Passionate reunions separated by weeks of lonely drudgery. Piles of scratchy blankets, a little fire in Laura’s stove keeping them warm. All the time in the worlds, except it wasn’t. _Remember what we said?_ )

Laura maneuvers around, arranging herself to face him on the narrow rack. She leans forward and unbuttons his tunic for him, a wordless instruction to get more comfortable.

When she leans back against the pillows and her knee creaks and pops in protest at being stretched out, she presses experimentally against the muscles just above her knees, the front first and then the outside, and marvels at the feeling of tautness beneath.

“Sore, huh,” he says as he takes off his jacket and places it at the end of the bed.

She is. But after what her heart’s been through lately, her body needed this catharsis, to rediscover a purpose to her continued existence. Not as a prophet or a god, or as a president; just as a woman. As _Laura_. “I remember feeling almost this exhausted,” she begins, “right after I ran my first marathon. I was so tired, I practically fell asleep in the shower afterward.”

“You ran a marathon?” he says doubtfully. “Which one? The Pheidippides Classic?”

She shakes her head in answer, but nods in approval as his hands reach for the fastener to his pants.

“The race was on Aquaria,” she says. “During their Summerfest.”

“Aquaria. Not really a place I would associate with athletics.”

He had a point. The Aquarian festival was the planet’s main attraction and generally attracted revelers who tended toward the debauched. The small population of fishers and surfers made welcoming hosts for the festival that emphasized and celebrated the planet’s short but intense summer season as well as a philosophy of free love. It was notorious for putting even the most dedicated partiers to shame. Any running race would have been a minor sideshow at best.

Laura searches through stuck drawers of long-filed-away memories. Why _had_ they gone to Aquaria instead of participating in the much bigger Caprica City-to-Delphi race?

“My sisters and I originally planned on running Pheidippides, but only Sandra had signed up by the time the race sold out. Aquaria was just a week or two after, and we’d already been training, so…”

She eyes his torso appreciatively and pulls him down beside her, burrowing against him and reveling in the feeling of the his body’s warmth seeping into her own tired soul.

“Did the three of you run the whole thing together?”

She shakes her head, laughing. “No! Maybe for the first five miles or so. But Cheryl had slacked off in her training and was hurting, so she let us go. And by the halfway mark, Sandra was itching to make a go for it. She said she just wanted to get it over with sooner, but I think she was really delighting in kicking our asses. _Especially_ mine.”

“Fair enough,” Bill chuckles. “So you all finished. Impressive.”

“It was great,” she says. “Gods, Bill. I felt like I could take on anything after doing that. It hurt to walk, or go up and down steps, but I felt absolutely invincible anyway.”

“Not a bad way to be during Summerfest,” Bill says wryly.

“We got back to our campground, and I was so tired, I could barely get dressed again. But then my sisters and I started drinking beer, and talking about our races, and I just got this--I don’t know, infusion of energy.” She turns to him, her eyes wide and body thrumming with remembered experience and contemporaneous excitement. “We ended up staying up all night, laughing and chatting. And eating! Oh my lords, did we eat.”

“Are you hungry now?” he asks. “I could call the galley--”

She shakes her head definitively and places a finger on his lips. “No, Bill. Not now,” she says, and replaces her finger with her lips. “I think I’m getting that second wind.”


End file.
